


Dancing Lessons

by PlotDotOh (TheCheerfulPornographer)



Series: Valhalla Blues [5]
Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Hand Kink, Loki is an epic cockblock, M/M, Romance, characters I am less comfortable writing, gratuitous shoutouts to Grace Hopper, making out in a field, the first moon landing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/PlotDotOh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the outskirts of Asgard, Steve and Peggy meet again.</p>
<p>(A Steve/Peggy Valhalla Blues outtake.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancing Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Someone asked for Steve and Peggy's side of the reunion. This runs parallel to the first half of [chapter 15](http://archiveofourown.org/works/403450/chapters/761196), "Toccata and Fugue".
> 
> Basically just a writing exercise, trying to get my head around these characters and how they are together.
> 
> Soundtrack to this story: [Skeletons](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZnIDwnWJtA) by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Peggy is looking at her hands, as they grip the reins that theoretically control the huge, grey Aesir mare. (In truth, she suspects the horse is just following Brunhild, and would continue to do so no matter what Peggy did.) She's remembering how her hands looked right before she died: wrinkled, trembling, spotted with age. Unable to hold even a fork, much less a pistol.

How different they are now: pink and strong, with sturdy fingers. Capable hands, she hopes. Once again the hands of a young person.

She's looking at her hands and thinking of all the things that you can tell about someone, from their hands — their age, their attention to fashion, the manner in which they make a living. Oftentimes, something about their basic attitude toward life. 

She's looking at her hands, but she's thinking of another pair. 

Steve's hands were broad and strong and plain, but never clumsy; they were equally comfortable wielding a pencil or a gun. Long ago, oh how closely she'd watched those hands, whenever they entered her field of vision. Watched and studied and stored up every detail, so that she could replay them later, when she was alone.

Once memorized, every detail — but no longer. Now they are all fuzzy: the shape of the nails, the paths of the lines to which palm-readers assign meaning, all faded with the intervening decades. Now only the broadest outlines remain.

70 years. That's how long it has been, since Peggy last saw him. Six years since she died, six long years of fruitless searching; and 64 years before that, while she believed that he was dead. Dead and gone. And him still living, the whole time...

70 years, for her. 

For him — what? A couple of months?

Peggy hasn't thought it — hasn't allowed herself to think it, before now. She fought for this, blew up a dining hall for this, was hunted by the Guardians for this, all for this moment. It has been her singular goal, to the exclusion of all others, ever since she died. Now that the moment has arrived, she is terrified. 

What if Steve isn't at all like the man she remembers? What if she's been chasing a myth, and the living person is doomed to disappoint?

Or, what if he only came out of a sense of duty, or out of curiosity? What if he doesn't really care, not the way she does?

Or what if, after 70 years, she can no longer be the woman that he probably-maybe-might-have-almost loved?

What if, what if... But it's too late to turn back now. The horses are speeding up, leaving the road, trotting smartly across gentle, rolling fields. The sky grows ever darker, the stars ever more brilliant. Then they slow to a stop, and Phil gracefully jumps off. This must be the meeting place, here beneath this gigantic elm.

Peggy dismounts slowly, unused to riding; Brunhild salutes them and leads the horses away. They settle in to wait, leaning against the gnarled trunk. Peggy looks over at Phil, but his face is just as inscrutable as ever. Even now, he still plays his cards close to the vest. 

After a couple of minutes, there's a flash of brightness, like far-off lightning, and a sound like a thunderclap. And then there's Thor, landing heavily and burying his feet in Asgard dirt. 

In the god's arms is a man, rather ill-looking at the moment, but handsome in a rough-hewn and muscled sort of way. This must be Clint Barton, Phil's husband. And there, clinging to Thor's back, is...

There is Steve.

He looks exactly how he's looked in Peggy's dreams, and in the old photographs she had kept on Earth. There's not a single extra line on his face, not one new wrinkle. He's even carrying a shield strapped to his back.

_He's wearing blue jeans,_ a part of Peggy's mind notes, as the rest of it gibbers and melts. _How odd, to see him wearing blue jeans..._ In Steve's time, they were not a common fashion. 

They do look damned good on him, though.

He slides down from Thor's back, and his eyes go right to Peggy. She looks away, cursing her own ineptitude. She feels drastically at a loss for what to do and what to say. 

Seeking help, she looks to Phil, but he's no longer there beside her. She didn't even see him move, but he and the other man are clinging together violently, without an inch of space between them, and Phil is... 

Phil is sobbing. Poker-faced Phil, her partner in crime, is openly sobbing, loud and unashamed. As Peggy watches, the two of them sink to the ground, uncaring and oblivious to everything around them. 

Helplessly she looks to Thor. The god smiles at her and nods, salutes Steve in the Aesir fashion, and then tosses his hammer upward and is gone.

While she stood there dithering, Steve has walked over to Peggy's side, where he now stands at ease. He's avoiding looking at Clint and Phil, but he has a slight smile on his face as he carefully doesn't watch them. She wonders if he finds it strange to see two men acting like this, but he seems unsurprised enough.

Catching her eye, he holds a finger to his lips and silently beckons her to follow. She walks behind him, stepping in the outlines of his larger footprints, until they round a small hill and Clint and Phil are out of sight. Then he stops.

Peggy draws level with him, and they turn and stare at one another for a moment. _So,_ Peggy thinks, with a hopeless sinking feeling. _Here we are. What now?_

"Peggy," Steve says. Just that one word: her name. He lifts his hand, holds it out for her, open and waiting. An invitation.

Those hands; there they are. Those the knuckles, broad and strong; those the fingernails, short and neatly rounded; there the heartline, creased across the palm. Just as she remembers. Everything like she remembers.

Peggy stares down at it, and bursts into tears.

\------

Steve obviously doesn't know what to say or do. Peggy feels bad for him, even as she struggles to regain control. She gulps in great huge breaths of the cool air, trying to calm herself. Whatever else Steve may be, he's a good man, and she would despise herself for making him feel bad. 

_I fought a valkyrie and won,_ she thinks. _I can do this._

When she can speak again, she blurts out, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I..."

"No, no," Steve says. "Don't apologize." He looks down and drags his toe across the dirt. "It's been a long time for you, I know that. A lot longer than it's been for me. It must be very strange, seeing me like this, after a whole lifetime." He looks up at her, and his eyes are very dark, reflecting starlight. "You must feel like you don't really know me anymore."

Peggy brushes her hair back from her face, and does her best to look like she wasn't just sobbing. "It's not —" She stops, clears her throat, tries again. "It's not that, exactly," she says. "It's more that... _You_ really don't know _me_ anymore." Steve just looks at her, patiently waiting for more. 

"You think that you do, but you don't," she says, feeling frustrated at her own lack of eloquence. "You're still the same, exactly the same, even wearing blue jeans. And meanwhile I've got an entire lifetime behind me, since you saw me last. I might look like I'm in my twenties, but ten years ago I was an old woman, Steve. I'm not a girl anymore. Not inside my mind."

She wipes a stray tear from her face with a grimace, and tries again. "You wanted me to teach you how to dance, remember? Well, I've forgotten how. I've already forgotten."

_Please,_ she wants to say, but doesn't. She doesn't even know what she's asking for, just that one word. _Please._

She waits with bated breath for Steve to speak.

"Well, we'll just have to make up our own steps, then," he finally says, and Peggy feels almost faint with relief. 

He grins at her encouragingly. "I understand what you're saying, Peggy, really I do. You've seen things and done things that I can't even imagine, and maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know who you are anymore. But I know who you were, and I know that I..." He falters, just a little. "I know how I felt about that girl. And I want to, Peggy." His voice full of conviction, no room for doubt. "I _want_ to know. I want to hear all about it, everything that you want to tell me. Everything that you can put into words."

He holds out his hand again, broad and familiar, and patient. So very patient. "Whaddaya say?" He gestures around them. "I'm afraid that I can't offer dinner and a movie under present circumstances, but shall we make it a date? Peggy Carter, will you go out walking with me?"

She laughs weakly. "Only you, Steven Rogers. Only you." 

Peggy takes the hand that's offered, clutching it tightly in both of her own. "Yes. I'd love to go out walking."

\-----

"Wow. I can't even imagine it, though. All of those changes, living through them... It's just so much to take in from my perspective, you know?" They're sitting on a fallen log, as broad and smooth as any bench. Now Steve swivels around and sits sideways, facing Peggy. "Tell me a story. Tell me something that you remember."

It doesn't take very long for something to come to Peggy's mind. "The number one thing that I will never, ever forget is watching the first moon landing."

"I was in the US at the time, teaching at Harvard as a visiting professor. I remember that I was assigned to the same office that had once been used by Grace Hopper, which I got a real kick out of. I even kept a little picture of her at my desk." She laughs at the memory. "She was a computer scientist, a really pioneering one," she explains, seeing Steve's confused look. "Someone who I admired."

"Anyway, a bunch of us from the department were all working, of course, and we all gathered around and watched it on this little television. It just felt like... The excitement in the room was palpable. All of these brilliant minds around me. And all of us believed, at that moment, that we were genuinely on the verge of solving mankind's biggest problems, once and for all. It was a time of such great optimism."

She smiles wistfully at the memory. "I hadn't thought about you in a while, then. I was keeping pretty busy, with my teaching and my research and just... going about my life. But I remember very clearly, when Neil Armstrong set foot upon the surface of the moon, in that moment I thought of you, and wished that you could see it. Mankind breaking the bonds of gravity, leaving the nest. I could just hear you exclaiming about it all." 

She waves her hand at the strange constellations all around them. "Of course, I had no idea then that I would one day myself stand on another planet, even if I had to die to do it."

"I watched that," Steve says. "A recording of it, anyhow. I watched it on the Internet." He pronounces the word carefully, with sharp r's and crisp t's, and Peggy wonders suddenly what his modern companions must make of him. It can't be easy. "Of course, I'm sure it's not the same as being there," he continues.

"No, I imagine not." Feeling brave, Peggy slides a few inches closer and puts her arm around Steve's back. He tenses instinctively at the touch, but then he relaxes all over and gives her a warm smile, putting his arm around her waist in return. 

She likes how it feels there, very much. All warm and solid.

"Of course, then came the never-ending nuclear crisis, and holes in the ozone and mass extinctions and terrorists blowing up buildings with people inside, and every other sort of horrible thing. I remember years when everyone I knew, everyone in Defence Intelligence and the Army and in academia, all believed that the world was coming to an end — that humanity was inevitably going to wipe itself out, this time. If not with the nukes, then some other way. And it seemed like everyone was either numb or so afraid, all of us working our hands off just to stay afloat, to avoid a third Great War. And every time I heard another piece of bad news, I would always wish that you were there."

"I had this crazy idea that if you were there, somehow it would help. Like you could just show up and save the day, like you did during the War, and lead us all to our humanity once more." She wipes at her face furtively with her unoccupied hand. "And at the same time I would feel so incredibly guilty for wanting it, because you had already saved the day a hundred times over, and given your life up in the process. Who was I to wish you back for even more?" Peggy's never said any of this ever, to anyone. "I knew that it was up to us, the living. But I couldn't help but feel, sometimes, like we always fell short of the standard that you set."

She's very glad for that arm around her waist, holding her up.

"When I think back over the events of my lifetime," she continues, "I think of great beauty and great terror, and a constantly-accelerating pace of change. Sometimes when I think about it, I feel like I can't breathe — and I _lived_ through it. The last half of the 20th century was one a hell of a ride."

"I can't imagine what it must seem like to you, facing all of this between one day and the next. Earth must seem stranger to you than Asgard, at this point."

Steve wraps his other arm around her and pulls her close. Peggy lets him. _He's like a house,_ an irreverent part of her mind thinks, as she snuggles in closer to his side. _Huge and warm and solid, and people instinctively turn to him whenever there's a storm._

She wonders if there's still room for her in there, somewhere.

_Best change the subject._

"Your turn," she says, nudging his side. "Tell me something about your life. Tell me about these Avengers."

"I'll do one better," he says, letting go of her temporarily to reach into his pocket. "I can show you." He pulls out a small, pocket-sized sketchbook, and flips it open. "These are all of my teammates."

He turns through the pages, showing her his sketches and introducing their subjects. There's Tony Stark, drawn on one page in his high-tech battle suit, and on the next in regular clothing, bent over a workbench of some sort with a screwdriver in his hand. There's Bruce Banner, slightly disheveled, looking at some kind of graph; and there's his fearsome alter-ego, the Hulk. There's Natasha Romanov, who Peggy immediately wants to meet, and Thor, who she knows already. 

On the next page is a black man in an eyepatch and long coat, who Steve introduces as the SHIELD boss, Nick Fury. "Who lives up to his name," Steve adds. Peggy thinks she remembers seeing a picture of Fury as a much younger man, in some intelligence publication.

Steve flips the page and Phil is there, in a sketch that must have been done from memory. He's rendered all in faint grey outlines against a bright pastel sky, with the ocean in the background. Nothing else is in the frame. Steve can't have known him long, but the Coulson in the drawing looks exactly like her friend. 

He turns over to the following page, and there's Hawkeye — Phil's Clint. In the drawing, the archer is sitting cross-legged, looking off into the distance, with a bow held loosely in one hand. In the other hand is an arrow with the head snapped off. A long, black shadow stretches out behind him, covering most of the page in darkness, threatening to overflow the frame. Steve must have used up a whole pencil lead on that one.

Peggy studies the image carefully. Here is someone who has obviously known pain, but who is persevering through it. She hopes that she gets to meet him properly, someday.

"You know," she remarks, "I never would have guessed that Phil was a homosexual, if he hadn't told me. Or this one, either." She taps the page. "They don't seem like the type. Not that I knew any gays personally..." She pauses, considers. "Or, huh, maybe I did. I guess I wouldn't really have known, would I?"

"It's good that they can be open about it, now," Steve says firmly. "I knew a guy, in the Commandoes. He was a damned good soldier, too. Everyone knew it, and nobody discussed it. It was still hard on him, though, I could tell that much." He studies the picture of Clint and adds, "These two, they're for real. Anyone can see it." 

He flips to the next page. The new drawing shows Hawkeye standing, stretching, dressed in civilian clothes, with a mug in one hand and an exuberant, almost silly grin on his face. "I drew this after he learned that he would get to see Phil again."

"Wow. That's quite a difference."

"Yeah." They fall silent, studying the image. 

Peggy thinks that only a monster could begrudge anyone something that makes him so obviously happy — especially someone as brave and honorable as Phil. Even if it's not really what she's used to.

"You know," Steve says suddenly, "I think that might be the biggest thing I've learned so far, in this new era. That you can't necessarily tell about people, just from looking. Can't tell much of anything, really." He leans back, rolling his shoulders. 

"Out of everything that you've described, all of the horror and the beauty, I think that might be the one thing that people have started to get right. It seems like, here in 2013, we're starting to learn how to let people conduct their lives as they please. Just so long as they aren't hurting anyone." He smiles at her. 

"I like that attitude. I like it a lot."

Peggy nods. "Indeed." She smiles, and pokes at Steve's side playfully. "And you'd know all about not being able to tell from looking, wouldn't you? I mean, you were still Captain America, before. The serum just upgraded your equipment. So to speak."

Steve laughs and blushes, both at the same time. His laugh is free and honest, and completely adorable. 

_Let this work out,_ Peggy thinks. _God or whoever's out there, please — just let this work out._

"Hey, that goes for you too," Steve says, and pokes her back. She squeals and bats at his hand, rueing the fact that she's so ticklish. "Back when you were a little girl having tea parties with your dolls, who would have guessed that you would one day help bring down a terrible dictator?" he teases. "Or teach at Harvard, or lead a whole brigade of scientists and cryptographers?"

"Hey, who says that I had tea parties with my dolls?" she laughingly protests. "Am I that much of a girly-girl?"

"I notice that you don't deny it," Steve smiles. When he speaks again, his voice is low and soft. "No, I just know because the thought of it is utterly adorable, and _you're_ utterly adorable, so, you see," he spreads his hands wide, "it all just fits."

That doesn't really make sense, but Peggy doesn't care. She's too busy staring into Steve's eyes, watching him watch her back.

_He's so beautiful,_ she allows herself to think. _He's always been so beautiful, ever since I met him. Both before and after._

_I had forgotten._

Peggy leans up and Steve leans down, both at the same time. Their noses bump together, but they quickly reposition, and successfully execute their second-ever kiss.

Steve is a quick learner. Peggy is impressed.

\-----

"I beg your pardon, Lord and Lady!" The voice is loud, frantic, and female.

Steve and Peggy jump apart and scramble into sitting positions, pulling themselves up out of the soft grass. Peggy hastily adjusts her blouse and smooths her skirt back down over her knees, while Steve looks frantically around for his shirt.

Peggy looks up to see the shadowed outline of Brunhild, towering against the sky. The valkyrie is staring down at them; Peggy can't make out the expression on her face, but her voice sounds upset. "Lady Margaret, you must return to Valhalla at once!" the valkyrie cries.

"Why, what's happened?" she demands.

"Loki has gone missing!"


End file.
